Surviving the Big Wave ...

Sandy Beach
Originally uploaded by © KristoforG
In a session with my healer yesterday, I got to the heart of what is scary for me when life stuff feels too big or overwhelming or too painful to feel ...

A wave too big that I'll never survive it.

It is from this place of terror whereby my dam and concrete wall construction is done. In non dual-healing terms, it is the territory of nega-Chesed: counter to flow, loving-kindness, it is tsunami-like and spinning and chaos. For me, it is the stuff I believe I can't bear or that I don't want to feel for fear I will drown in it.

The truth is ... I have survived big waves. My means of coming out on the other side may not have been very functional, yet I did make it to the shore. My alcoholic drinking was a temporary and illusory means of perceiving control over the accumulating wave of all of my history that I could no longer keep at bay, for fear it would wipe out everything. My busyness and workaholism during my long-term partnership was another way I surfed over the very same waves of my childhood home, packaged slightly differently, but able to spill and crash just the same.

So why not just get the surf board out instead of building a fortress ? Why do these waterfalls of chaos terrify me still ?

My healer's response to this: Because you think you'll die.

Another truth: I am going to die, AND, not likely from life's messiness. I may get very very soaked, feel uncomfortable, damp, washed out ... but probably will not die from feeling this.

One of the ways I have tried to fool myself and others is to silently build my dams underground and operate from the guise of "being serene, at peace". This is Chesed's partner, Gevurah, trying to counter it and ending up being out of balance with Chesed. My healer tells me that the real healing is in not believing my presenting Gevurah. The peace I convince myself and others of during times of distress cannot always be trusted. It is one of my covert ways of trying to escape the waves in an effort to not die. It feels more like burying my head in the sand, when the onslaught of water is eventually gonna come whether I keep it down there or decide to look at where and how fast the water is coming !

Another truth:   the "Big Wave"  is a construct of my anxiety about the unknown,  an embellishment of the challenges in life.  My belief that a situation is too enormous is my fear about my ability to be able to handle it.

Surviving the waves of life is not for the faint of heart, yet it's not about heroics or bravery. I believe I understand in this moment it is about willingness to be in the flow of life. Any act to dodge or avoid this turbulence is an attempt to get out of the stream, thereby missing life in all of its currents and movements and surprises. Through a barage of tears yesterday, I said aloud to my healer that I don't want to block the flow of my life, I want to be in it. This, for me, is how to survive the "big wave".